Pro Bowling Tournament and Playoff Processes: Explained

We're getting ready for our every-other-year pro bowling card update, which will be bigger and better than ever this year! We'll be releasing card sets for both the men's and women's pro tours, over 80 bowlers in each card set. We'll also be debuting a brand new BOWL-O-RAMA PLAAY mat the same day the cards come out (June 28th) and are planning a special week-long event to highlight these new bowling goodies. We're calling it "Binge Week: Bowling!" The week of June 28th, we'll offer BOWL-O-RAMA at it's "holiday sale" price ($39), special bundled savings for the PLAAY mat and card sets, AND two live bowling-themed YouTube streams (Monday 6/28 and Thursday 7/1). But, more on all this later!...

In creating the liner notes for our new bowling card sets, it occurred to me that I really wasn't very familiar with how professional bowling conducts its tour events. What's the specific process through which a tour event drills down to its champion? I didn't really know, and while the information is readily available through an appropriate Google search, usually it's explained in a way that's difficult to understand unless you're knowledgeable about the process in the first place. (Or, maybe I'm just simple-minded?) So I reached out to PLAAY Gamer Mike Cravens (who was instrumental in researching and compiling the data for our 2021 bowling cards), asking if he could provide--in layman's terms--an explanation of how to run a tabletop version of an authentic pro bowling event. I thought his explanation was very enlightening, and am sharing it here as a blog post since I'm pretty sure there are lots of folks in the same boat as me, wanting to run an authentic bowling season on my tabletop but not really knowing what it looks like...

“A typical PBA tournament format has each bowler rolling eighteen qualifying games, three blocks of six games. All scores added together and the top twenty-four advance to match play. Positional ties are broken by whichever bowler had the highest single-game total.

“Match play consists of one game, head-to-head matches against each opponent. That is, each of the twenty-four finalists bowls a single match (game) against each of the other 23 finalists. The winner of the match gets an additional thirty (30) bonus points added to his overall pinfall total (fifteen to each bowler on a tie). It's important to win as many matches as possible to secure bonus points. You will sometimes see a player with a higher average (actual pinfall with no bonus) ranked below a player with a lower average because they won more games in match play and secured more bonus points.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: PLAAY gamer Bob Hansen provided us with additional information about the match play segment. The top 24 bowlers do bowl one game against each of the other 23 finalists, but there’s a 24th game added AFTER the 23 games. Bob writes, “The final game matchups are based on a reordering of the total pins (including bonuses) and having the 1 and 2 bowlers face off, the 3 and 4 and so on. This final matchup is considered a positioning round where positions can, and often do, change quite dramatically before the ladder is determined, and, for those not making the ladder, where their final position will be and what points they get for that event.”

“After match play, the top five move on to the stepladder finals (TV broadcast). Once again ties in the rankings are broken by the highest game rolled. The fifth seed bowls against the fourth seed, the winner then bowls against the third seed, the winner bowls against the number two seed, and that winner bowls against the top seed for the title, cash & trophy.

“Ties in the stepladder finals are broken by a ninth and tenth frame roll off, highest score advances. If they are still tied after the roll-off, a sudden death single ball high count roll off is used. Bowlers will take turns rolling a first ball until someone wins.

“Anyone that bowls a perfect game in a televised match gets a $10,000 bonus. If it is in the championship match of one of the four majors, they get a $1,000,000 bonus!

“Championship points are awarded in each tournament, with the cumulative point totals used to determine the season champion. Points are allocated this way...

1st, 2500 points

2nd, 1500 points

3rd, 1150 points

4th, 950 points

5th, 850 points

6th, 750 points

7th, 550 points

8th, 500 points

9th, 475 points

10th, 450 points

11th, 425 points

12th, 400 points

13th, 375 points

14th, 350 points

15th, 325 points

16th, 300 points

17th, 275 points

18th, 250 points

19th, 225 points

20th, 200 points

21st, 175 points

22nd, 150 points

23rd, 125 points

24th, 100 points

25th, 75 points

26th, 50 points

27th, 25 points

28th, 20 points

29th, 15 points

30th, 10 points

31st through 50th, 5 points

51st and out, 3 points

“For a typical professional "Major Tournament," each bowler rolls twenty-four qualifying games in three blocks of eight games. The field is then cut to the ‘cashers’ (those winning prize money), roughly half the field. An additional eight games of qualifying are rolled then the field is cut to the top twenty-four for match play. Match play, tie-breakers and stepladder finals follow the same format as a normal tournament. All points awarded at Majors are tripled. So, first place gets 7500 points instead of 2500, second place gets 4500 points instead of 1500, and so on.

“The pro tour playoffs include the top twenty-four bowlers in championship points at the end of the season. These bowlers are seeded based on total points. The top eight seeds get first round byes. All matches up to the finals are the first to three points. The first two games are worth a point each. If the games are split, the tie breaker will be a 9th and 10th frame roll off. Highest score advances. If they are still tied after that, a sudden death single ball, high count roll off, is used. Bowlers will take turns rolling a single ball until someone wins. The finals will be the best of four. If the games are split, the tie breaker will be a 9th and 10th frame roll off. Highest score advances. If they are still tied after that, a sudden death single ball, high count roll off, is used. Bowlers will take turns rolling a single ball until someone wins.”

That's Mike's summary of how pro bowling works, in individual tournament, season/campaign and post-season/playoff modes. Good stuff!

Obviously, running a full tournament or playoff would be a mammoth tabletop project, even for a fast-playing game like BOWL-O-RAMA. If you included the entire card set, 80+ bowlers, that's 1500 games of bowling--roughly 120 hours of tabletop game time, just for qualifying! Even with the quick-play chart, where you can get a game's result in a few seconds, you're still talking about 1500+ dice rolls--the time-savings of quick-play would be more than outweighed by the tedium of such an endeavor.

So, it feels like we need a "tournament mode" for bowling similar to what we created for HISTORY MAKER GOLF. The goal would be to get to the stepladder aspect--the part that's on TV--relatively quickly and painlessly, and play that out in full game mode.

We plan to spend some time brainstorming exactly such a feature--to be continued!!